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X-Men: Next Dimension

Score: 7.8 / 10

Most
fighting games have a “Story” mode.If you’re a fan of the genre, you know precisely what I mean.Story means you fight some guys get a quick cutscene that
doesn’t have any real significance.Then when you stand triumphant over the last opponent you might
get another cutscene or a scrolling snippet of text.In Story mode terms, X-Men: Next Dimension (XND) blasts
everything else out of the water then hits them with a psychic attack.

XND
has an actual story – complete with comic book twists – that has the
X-Men facing off against the evil Bastion, who’s planning the
extermination of mutantkind.Instead
of choosing a character and taking them from start to finish, you follow
the story, getting to use nearly all the X-Men in the course of events.There are points where you have a chance to pick from a limited
selection of characters to take into the next encounter, but by the end
of the game, you should have at least a working knowledge of how to use
most of the characters.

Although
the Story mode is strong, XND maintains a selection of traditional
fighting modes including Arcade, Versus, Survival, Team, and Time
Attack.It’s with these
modes that all the characters – except the locked ones – are
available. (There are some pretty strong hints from the fighting
environments just who those locked characters are.)

The
character roster shouldn’t disappoint anyone.All your favorite X-Men characters are here: Cyclops, Rogue,
Mystique, Magneto, Forge, Juggernaut, Wolverine, Lady Deathstrike,
Gambit, Toad, and Nightcrawler.There
are a total of 24 fighters and they all look awesome especially, some of
the larger characters, and in particular, Juggernaut.He may be the slowest guy around but he sure does look awesome.But one aspect of the character animation that is a total
distraction: jiggle factor.

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Almost
without exception, the female characters are hiding basketballs in their
shirts.You think you’ve
seen curvaceous and bouncy in a videogame?Wait until you see Psylocke and Rogue going at it.At times I couldn’t help but feel a bit uncomfortable with it.I pointed out the jiggling to my wife, “I know it’s comic
book stuff, but what the hell’s the point?”We both agreed it was excessive, bordering on objectification of
women, but then she left the room and I started panting again.Regardless, it’s distracting.Really.

So
far, XND has all the features that make up a great fighting game:
variety of game modes, solid roster of characters, and some slick
looking fighters.All this
is for naught without solid control.

And
XND succeeds to large extent, offering a control scheme that makes the
fighting easy for beginners to get into the game, while offering enough
finesse moves and fast action for fighting veterans. (Admittedly, the
control can seem unresponsive at times -- with some practice this can be
overcome.)One only needs
to take a look at the roster of moves for each character to see how much
depth XND has.Stringing
these moves into devastating combos does take practice since every
button and stick on the controller is put to use.Not only that, if your character can fly you can take to the air
for short periods to plan your attack.There are other character specific attacks, such as Phoenix’s
telekinetic power that can be used to pick up objects and fling them at
opponents.Besides
stringing regular attacks together, each character has access to four
Super moves (Level 1, 2, 3, and 4) that become available after filling
up the Super meter.The
power earned can also be funneled into the Super move of your choice by
use of the Z-button, which presents probably the only major problem –
the Z-button is just too small for my big hands to be used effectively!

Still,
lots of different attacks and moves (including aerial) make for good
variety, and XND can hold it’s own against more established fighting
franchises – whether fighting the CPU or a human opponent.

A
couple of the less than stellar features of XND is the uneven audio and
some of the fighting environments.

Patrick
Stewart makes an appearance as Professor Xavier in his attempt to appear
in every Activision project – I hear that he’ll be one of the
unlockable characters in Tony Hawk 5 – and turns in a great
performance.And the music
is pretty good too, but the character catchphrases are practically
unbearable.They repeat the
same line over and over and most are delivered with the same level of
enthusiasm of someone opening the mail.And there’s a jarring disconnect between the volume of the
voices and every other sound.The
multi-level fighting environments are great most of the time.They’re 3D and, in general, are imaginative and great to look
at (especially the Danger Room with its shifting scenes) but then there
are few that don’t measure up – made more noticeable than if the
“arenas” were all average.

Blemishes
aside, X-Men: Next Dimension is a good fighting game, made even better
by the story mode that actually tells a story and does something
different.X-Men and comic
book fans won’t be disappointed, and if you’re into the fighting
genre, it’s worth at least a rental.